The EU’s €2 billion Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), launched a fourth call for proposals, as it continues on its mission of re-shaping the drug discovery and development process and making the European pharma sector more competitive.
At the same time it published guidelines, which are designed to clarify IP issues relating to its private-public projects. IMI said these are intended to underline the “flexibility” provided by its IP Rules and help consortia to reach clear and comprehensive IP agreements as part of the overall project agreement.
Arguments over IP have proved a sticking point in agreeing IMI collaborations in the past, with would-be academic partners feeling they were not being treated fairly in what is the world’s largest public-private partnership in health research and development.
The European Union will put €105 million into the fourth call, to matched by in kind contributions from pharma industry partners, for collaborative research projects in areas including:
- linking patients’ data for the discovery of better and more targeted therapies;
- knowledge management of experimental data for translation into drugs for patients;
- omplications of obesity;
- predicting Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias;
- drug delivery by nanocarriers;
- sustainability of chemical drug production;
- stem cells for drug discovery;
- understanding the behaviour of drugs in the human body.
Michel Goldman, Executive Director of IMI said the collaboration is changing the way pharmaceutical research is performed, by linking academic teams, small and medium sized enterprises, patients’organisations and regulators with large pharmaceutical companies in IMI projects. “This innovative approach is proving its success in the 23 IMI projects that are already producing impressive results,” Goldman claimed, adding, “This makes us confident that the fourth call will lead to a new set of game-changing projects in key areas of health research.”
IMI projects focus on new methods and tools that will enable the entire sector to accelerate the development of safer and more effective treatments, rather than on the development of new drugs as such.
Goldman said there is a clear need for open collaboration in pre-competitive research, to boost innovation in healthcare, to increase the competitiveness of pharmaceutical research in Europe, and to develop better, safer and more effective medicines. “By increasing the understanding of the mechanisms of disease and the individual differences between patients, a more personalised medicine is coming within reach,” he said.
More information: www.imi.europa.eu
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